Gratitude

Happy Fall to you all!   Hope you are greatly enjoying the change in colors and the cooler weather! I am missing it and am really missing it.  (Does that make sense?) We have had heat and no rain for so long. So much brown grass, and dry ground everywhere.  The sky will tease us with thunder and a bit of rain every once in awhile but we need some good downpours.

Last week we had a Harvest Party with our Hostel and Hostel One.  A lady from America sent the kids some candy and other goodies so we had a lot of fun with our prizes. The kids dressed up and showed off their creativity. That was Thursday. Friday was the first indoor soccer games.  Our school has three girls teams and two boys teams.  All of our dorm kids are involved in soccer except for one boy.  It is by far their favorite sport. They even get up early in the morning to play. They are good! Saturday was SKATE NIGHT!  Wyatt's class sponsored the event, so I helped them make 300 soft pretzels to sell.  They were a big hit, and the dorm smelled amazing!

This week we have finally started our Indonesian classes again.  We have a different teacher and hopefully this time it will be profitable.  It has been difficult finding someone who wants to teach us instead of just someone who wants to work on their own English.

Tomorrow is a big community-wide garage sale.  The dorm has a few booths since the kids and I have stuff to sell. We will donate most of the profits to Sophie's Papuan Soccer team.  Many of the girls on that team don't have shoes, or they have one pair that they share. It is not uncommon to see a kid with one shoe on and another kid with the other shoe on.  So our dorm wants to help their coach buy them shoes. She has already been able to buy some of them shoes and at least 5 or 6 of them have asked if she could keep the shoes at her house. They said if they bring them home someone will steal them. What a different life, huh? My friend Mandy said that her house helper came to work barefoot and said that during the night someone came and stole all of her family's shoes. They only had one pair each, but now they are gone. 

We have so much to be thankful for.  That was my prayer today. I downloaded this list of 31 Virtues to Pray for your Children and today's virtue was gratitude-to live lives overflowing with thankfulness.  That is what I want for me, and what I want for ALL of my kids.

I am continually thankful for you all.  Keep praying for us.

Love 

Rachel

The whole group.  We had a great time dressing up.

Rachel dressed in '80's fashion, Kim as a desperate housewife.

Seun was Iron Man, Sophie was Captain America.

Hannah was The Hulk.

Natasha was a clown.

Aaaand, we ate.

Wyatt's class making pretzels.

Skate night!!

Wyatt had to borrow some socks for the old time skates.

No traffic lights.  It was busy.

Some of our kids

Happy Monday to you!  Hope you have a jolly good weekend.  This weekend here was S.E.W. Which stands for spiritual emphasis weekend.  The whole high school met Friday after school through Saturday at 5 for games, team building activities, praise and worship and teaching along with capture the flag, and a great slip-n-slide. The girls stayed overnight in the drama room and the boys slept in the library.  It was an amazing time of growth and fellowship.

So for our dorm, that only left two dorm girls and Cale and Sophie.  It was nice to have that time with our middle schoolers.  We got pizza and invited the other dorm over.

I wanted to introduce you to two of our dorm girls, Atalee and Alyssa brown.  They are sisters and their parents, Rich and Karen are working in the Moi tribe.  They have been teaching through the bible and the Moi are getting really excited about what they are hearing.  The Moi wanted to have a teaching time when everyone from the neighboring villages could come and hear as well.  So, they picked a date and around 130 adults came with all their children from all directions to hear the creator's talk. There were 17 leaders in the village that broke the people up into 6 groups and taught the bible from 7 in the morning until 4 or 5 at night. Some had never heard the scriptures before.  They were so eager to hear about God's love.  The leaders of the village are really stepping up and realizing that it is their responsibility to teach others what they know.  Such exciting things are happening there.  Please pray for the Moi village and for the 20 to 30 new believers that trusted in God during this time of teaching. If you would like to read more about this family you can click here and here.

The girls have had so many transitions in the past few months. They moved out of their village, moved away from mom and dad, into the dorm and went from being homeschooled to having to keep up with the fast pace of Hillcrest.  To help with some of these difficult transitions, Rich and Karen have moved to Sentani, and the girls will be living with them for awhile.  This has been such a great time of learning and growth for all of us and we are excited to see what God has planned next for the Browns and the Ericksons.

We feel so privileged to be a part of this ministry.  Thank you for praying.

Rachel